Last updated: March 29, 2024
This will be the same process for both wired and wireless connections.
- Grab a USB stick.
- Important: The USB stick needs to be formatted as FAT32.
- Log in to Screenly, go to the Screens page, click the purple + New Screen button, then select Hardware from the drop-down.
- Click the WiFi & Advanced Network Setup button at the top of the page.
- Select Start Setup, select either a WiFi or Wired connection, then enter your network details.
- Select Configure DNS Settings, and enter your DNS information. (note that your device may fail to connect to Screenly services without proper DNS details, even though it will appear reachable internally).
- Click Generate Configuration File, and a file named network.yaml will be downloaded to your computer.
- Put the downloaded file onto your USB stick.
- Safely remove the USB stick from your PC.
- Boot up your new Screenly player and wait for the "Network interface has no IP address" error page to appear.
- Insert the USB stick to a USB port on the device, and it should reboot and pick up the new configuration. If it doesn't reboot after 30 seconds, pull out the USB stick and put it in a different USB port (or see the tips below).
- Once the player reboots and comes up you can remove the USB stick.
To configure multiple devices going forward, use the same process. You can use the same USB stick with the network.yaml file - you would simply change the static IP address first in a text editor (be careful not to change the file naming or any text spacing within the file. If in doubt, simply create a new file using Step 3 above).
Tips
- If the network configuration is not picked up (e.g. the player does not reboot), simply try removing and re-inserting the USB stick again in a different USB port. Sometimes it takes a couple of tries. If you still have issues and you know the format is correct, try a different or brand-new USB stick.
- Ensure that the file name on your USB drive is exactly network.yaml. If there is a number added (like network(1).yaml, etc) that will interfere with the player reading the file, as .yaml files are very sensitive to spacing and naming. Delete the "(1)" from the name of the file on your USB drive and try again.
- Always use an empty USB stick that contains nothing else aside from the network.yaml file.